Oh, Sweet Nothing - MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
101

Last time my check engine light came on, it was because when the oil was changed, the guys apparently forgot to reset some electronic thingy-or-other that needs to be reset when the oil is changed. Apparently that’s a feature of newer cars. Scared the crap out of me, needless to say, but he took the car back to the oil change place and, sure enough, that’s what it was.

Of course, the time before that, it was because my engine had totally fried itself sitting the 24-hour Ivan-evacuation-from-hell traffic jam in Louisiana, and thank heaven the warranty had just run out and the service manager was feeling really nice that day because he ended getting 90% of it covered by warranty, so we only had to py $160 of a nearly $2K repair bill.

So it could be nothing, or it could definitely be something. Aren’t I helpful?

102

I squished KeithT’s cat this morning. Only a little and she’s fine. But I’m not used to having a cat sleeping next to me, so when the alarm went off, I rolled over to shut it off as usual and heard a little wheezing sound as I rolled onto the cat. :eek: Poor cat. Scared the crap out of me too. Not the best way to start the morning, that’s for sure.

I missed the end of last week’s MMP. What happened to MBG??

103

Good afternoon. I have had a quiet morning, balancing my checkbook and cleaning the apartment.

bobbio, you can sit on your hose? Isn’t that painful?

taters, my check engine light always comes on. I think my car is mocking me

104

But as to the car-I think you should take it with you. Maybe even drive it there. I’m serious.

Ow! stop hitting me!

105

After sitting on the hose for a while, my butt is gonna be sore. After a big incident, firefighter are rode hard and put away wet…

106

Busy day today…well, kinda. I have to go to the Snakes office to pick up the shirt the coach had signed by the players for Mr. SCL’s patient, then go to PetsMart for cat food. It’s a shame the two places aren’t closer together! I also have to do laundry again - the washer and dryer at the cabin aren’t very efficent and Mr. SCL brought a whole bag of laundry home with him yesterday. And I just noticed I really need to pay some attention to my fingernails.

I’m jealous again, DB, our season is only 27 home games.

MBG, we are waiting on the report from the neurologist.

Nava, quit spinning. You’ll always be Mama’s little girl - she can’t help it.

BCat and VB, thank you for what you are doing and you must promise us to stay safe and not take chances. A building is not worth your life under any circumstances. All three of my maternal uncles were firefighters, and one of them was badly injured during a fire; he took a blazing brick in the face. Your equipment is there to protect you - use it and care for it. [/lecture]

Super Freak a/k/a Magic escaped the cat suite again this morning and made a run for the pineapple plant. What is it with that cat?

107

Hmm. My mother doesn’t treat me like a little girl. I think I’m grateful. QD’s mom has never treated her like a little girl- as far back as I can remember, her mother would be falling apart and screaming and Quasi-Daughter would be taking care of stuff. Her mom can’t handle:
Cooking for dinner parties (which she loves to throw)
Christmas shopping (QD gets to buy and wrap her own presents)
Housework

It’s weird, because her mom is an intelligent, successful careerwoman, who runs the schedule-organizing and part of the admin at a big highschool, but she’s very prone to tantrums and crap at home. That’s part of how I ended up at seventeen with a fourteen-year-old Quasi-Daughter- she really, really liked to relax and let someone Mommy her instead of the other way around.And it’s been that way for eleven years now.

President’s Choice (a brand that is available in some American grocery stores, but is primarily Canadian), which is sort of kind of equivalent to Trader Joe’s, except a brand- they deal with decent ‘gourmet’ and organic food, a lot of prepared foods, and charges less than most major brands- has come out with their Christmas flyer.

Someone talk me out of buying chocolate raspberry pannacotta, and a dark chocolate Toblerone knock-off. Their milk chocolate knockoff was really good. The dark is probably fantastic. Their flyers are dangerous.

108

I’m having what’s hopefully the final fitting for my wedding gown tonight. Which would be fine except that I’ve been noticing lately that my pants are feeling a bit tight. :frowning: I have a feeling that the gown may have to be let out a bit more than planned. Ugh.

109

Got the shirt and it looks so good Mr. SCL says his patient may want to frame it! :slight_smile: Coach done me proud!

I got a bright idea before I went to pick it up. My SIL gave me a boxful of pens (at least 100) with her website on them - where I sell my jewelry. I know the Fan Relations table at Snakes games (where all the contest entries are) constantly has pens “walk off”. So I took a bunch of the pens with me and asked the guy in charge of fan relations if they wanted them - they don’t compete with any of the Snakes advertisers. He said they would love to have them, so I have increased the potential reach of our website, and saved my beloved Snakes a few bucks on lost pens. I am a happy girl!

PetsMart was out of the 20lb bags of Iams Multi-Cat, so I got the 33lb bag. They all looked relieved when I came in and put it in the cabinet. I swear those furry little beggars look scared when I take the empty food bag out - “Is that it? Is there more? We’re gonna staaaaaaaaaaaaarve!”

How does water leave a water mattress without a leak? I’ve noticed the bed felt not right lately, and when I went to make it up I noticed the mattress was noticably low. I checked the liner - no moisture at all. Weird. So Mr. SCL put some more water in it. I hope he remembered to burp it.

110

I’m very grrrrrrrrrrr right now
Last week they told us some photographers were coming to take pics of employees working to displayin the lobby of the big building. I cleaned off my desk and wore a pretty top. They showed up at around 3pm and said “we’re here to take pictures” 2 cow-orkers said “not me, please” and they photogs said “Gee, noone wants their picture taken today” I said, in a voice I thought was loud enough “you can take mine, I don’t mind”. But they just went away. 2 people spoke up and they walked away from an office of 12.
I must be PMS because all I want to do right now is cry.

111

Dec 9th is my 23rd wedding anniversary - WooHoo indeed! :smiley:

Found out officially today that my project at work is to be continued, but I’m not project leader any more. My div director mentioned that and seemed all concerned that I was upset by this. Pfffft - as if! I had my chance, twice, now someone else can take it. What’s interesting is that the entire team is different, except for me. I’m the corporate knowledge. That’ll be interesting. But I know the new leader and he’s a nice guy - I can work with him. So yay! But I still don’t have a desk assignment yet.

I had to cancel our VISA today - somehow someone got the number. There were a few fraudulent charges, but one was caught by PayPal before I even knew it was made, one was quickly resolved by a phone call - apparently that company had been victimized by several bad credit purchases, and they’ve already credited the 150 back to me. The third was a charge for .09 - who the heck charges NINE CENTS??? :confused: A coworker suggested that fraudsters do that to see if they get away with it, then they go crazy charging. I called the phone number on that charge, and it’s an invalid number. Interesting… Anyway, we no longer have a VISA, and **FCD ** is going on travel tomorrow. I sure hope the car rental place takes his debit card.

That’s my day so far. What should I thaw for dinner??

112

Explain to me, slowly, in words of single syllables, why people only want to pay $20 for dinner, but are “tired of chicken”? These are people that should know better, too. Hello, a 3 course dinner for $20/person? We raised it to $25, and they pitched a fit. They’re lucky they get anything besides peanut butter and jelly. Everyone else is up to $30 - $35 for dinner and here I am, trying to find someplace, for the holidays, no less! for $25/head, when everyone is charging $50, and we keep getting booted for not being cost-effective. Well, we could go to Carrow’s or something, but they don’t wanna. That’s cheap. No kidding. But it fits within your budget, no? But it’s always been $20 for dinner! That’s a lot of money. Yes, yes it is a lot of money for a rubber chicken dinner, I agree. But you’re not just paying for dinner…oh, forget it. I’m resigning at the next board meeting. Idjits.

113

Allow me to suggest a diner’s private room. If there is a diner whose food is really good (Lawn Guylandt is full of those) ask if they will do a private party. My chorus has had several dinners at this one diner (and again our '06 Holiday dinner will be there) - for $29 we get a choice of soup or salad, a choice of 6 entrees (1 pasta, 2 fish, 2 chicken, 1 beef), veggies, potato, dessert, and coffee/tea/soda - and there is a cash bar. Plus it’s a private room so when we break into song, we don’t disturb the whole place.

114

So, like a dutiful little wife, I checked my oil level in the rig. Nope, oil is fine.

So, I then removed the owner’s manual and service contract and schlepped both clear to back to my office. I sat down and really read the manual. My issue could be could be several things:

Loose gas cap: If this is the case, it would take three drive cycles before the light would clear. The thing is, I fueled early LAST week and have driven several times since then, so I don’t think I’ll get off that easy.

The vehicle has run out of fuel: Uh, nope…don’t think so, still have well over half a tank left.

My emission control system: If this is the case, I am well and truly screwed. My service contract conveniently does not cover this. I am hoping against hope, that the original warranty does.

Any number of other problems. Sigh…

At any rate, I called the dealership and I am to take the car in at 9:35 tomorrow.

FCM, I’m sorry to hear about your credit theft there. I’m glad it was caught before things got out of hand. Be sure to continue monitor other cards, though, just in case. Also, I’m sorry you didn’t get to keep the team lead position. It seems wrong after all that you’ve done for that project.

115

It came to me while I was typing the very short OP. It’s an old Velvet Underground song. Or maybe Lou Reed.

We got roibbed at technical thingies this weekend. Someone drove up and took the friggin’ AC unit that was attached to the side of the building. Big freaking 18CER unit. And out security cameras need to be updated along those shown us by Mindfield I think. Because what we have has the resolution of a Commodore 64 display, around three pixels per inch. This is relevant, so I’m putting it in.

So when Sunday morning the bosses are reviewing the security tape in front of the police, someone says, “Hey, that looks like Sean’s truck.” It wasn’t, of course, but the police wanted to know who this Sean guy was, and insisted on getting my address even though the bosses told them there was no way I would have stolen from them. So I had a police visit Sunday. In fact, one of my bosses called to apologize because they inadvertantly sicced the police on me. So that was an interesting hour Sunday morning.

My GF’s father also went home from the hospital, while her stepmother (who is only a ytear or two older than her) was at the police station for ingoring a court date for her DUID. The woman is on more medications than a dozen professional wrestlers, and was driving erradically. Then her meds screwed her up again when she was supposed to go to court, so she forgot about going. So they issued a bench warrant, and finally got around to picking her up. This weekend, Saturday.

We also had some rain induced flooding through the door I just replaced in the garage. On Sunday. Found after the police left. I swear it was water-tight two weeks ago.

Yeah, it was a busy weekend. I’m surprised I didn’t have one drink to compensate.

Yesterday, iCandy at the front desk tried to pass a phone call to me from someone speaking French. He was trying to buy something. On my best day, the most French I know will get me up to four beers. There is no way I can even begin a technical discussion in a language I can’t understand, and I made it very plain to iCandy that I spoke absolutely no French. So I never talked to this guy. But the next time iCandy paged me, a couple of minutes later, I answered with “Oui?” She didn’t get it. Roundboy, however, fell out of his chair laughing. I heard him bounce.

116

Celebrate with me! I am done with all the papers due for this one class.

All that remains for me this semester is to write a 12+ page research paper, tweak the web thingy and send it and finish my part on the group project.

O Happy Day!

117

Yes, they beat that into us every time we turn around. During our speed drills, they check us to make sure everything is on correctly - Wristlets in place, gloves on, helmets on tight, buckles tight, all of it. Every square inch of our body is covered, or should be, if we’ve got all our gear on correctly. We have PASS devices on our SCBAs that activate if we get into trouble. If we don’t move for 30 seconds, it starts beeping. If we still don’t move, it gets progressively louder and louder until it’s blaring.

A Baltimore City firefighter was killed a few weeks ago, and the day of his funeral, they gave us an hour’s lecture that night in classon why we have to stay safe and protect ourselves first, and not become another victim to be rescued. It gets a little tedious, but I do understand the reasoning for it.

118

Taters, I have my fingers crossed for you. It took 2 years, 2 failed smog tests, and $3,000 to fix my Check Engine light. Then again, my car had 65,000 miles on it and I think your’s only has a third of that?

I’ve heard from another hotel that sounds like they can fit us in - in the Fireplace Atrium. I know a few people I’d like to stick in the fireplace…I hope this one works!

Congrats, rigs!

119

Fortunately, it was our one and only credit card - I’ve paid off and canceled all the rest. So that’s good.

And about the project lead, truly, I’m kinda relieved. First off, I had been knocking heads with the idiot naval officer and I didn’t relish working with him. Secondly, just about everyone else who is now in the team is senior to me so being a leader in that situation would be potentially uncomfortable. But most of all, I’m the only returning member of the original teams, so I’ll have a position of knowledge that the rest of them lack - that’s plenty of power for me. And I’m still the one they want to go back in Feb, so that’s cool. :smiley:

Dinner was chicken and oriental veggies mixed in saffron rice - yummmmm. I’ve got enough leftovers for lunch tomorrow - double yummm!

And now, I can chill for a while. Aaaahhhh… :smiley:

120

FCM, you inspired me- I just figured out a use for the cauliflower and cabbage in my fridge. I shredded the cabbage, steamed everything, added shredded carrots, and covered it in peanut-ginger sauce. I’m going to make rice, and that will be my dinner tonight and probably lunch for both of us tomorrow.

I’m thinking that instead of going to class tonight and not seeing Mr. Lissar at all today, I’ll go tomorrow to at least the first two. I hate the days when we don’t see each other.
hands eleanor a celebratory piece of dark chocolate toblerone knockoff